Choosing the Right Social Platforms for your Brand

Social media is a tool for increasing awareness. When creating a brand there are several factors you should consider before deciding which social networks are right for your brand.

What is your goal for social media? The over all goal isn’t to simply increase followers and interaction. Businesses need to make money. If a company is going to invest resources into a social campaign—they expect a ROI.

Where is your audience? Think about the demographic you are trying to reach. If your audience isn’t there, don’t use that platform. However that is only half the puzzle. The other half is reaching your audience from that platform.

Because Facebook has roughly 1.15 billion users, the odds are high your audience or your audiences’ influences will be there. However, Facebook has made it hard for business to gain organic traffic. So you have two options, be prepared to pay or use Facebook differently.

Where are your competitors? Before creating a social strategy, establish a base line for your industry. The Digital Marketing Institute listed some great tools for measuring your competitors’ success.

What kind of content do you want to create? A few years ago, this was simpler. If you didn’t want to create video, simply avoid YouTube. Today, you can upload short videos directly to Facebook, Instagram and Twitter. Studies show that visual content generates more interaction than plain text with a link.

How much time do you want to put into social? My advice, pick the right balance for your team. You don’t have to limit yourself to one network but don’t burn yourself out trying to run a social campaign on all the social networks. Additionally, choose a pace that lets you be genuine.

Below are links to the official vector logos of several social networks.